


Flap

by apparitionism



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grocery Store, F/F, Thanksgiving, dangerous supermarket cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 05:05:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10326206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apparitionism/pseuds/apparitionism
Summary: This little diversion is the result of combining two prompts. First came a tag coughed up by the AO3 random tag generator (“dangerous supermarket cuddling,” and I have tagged this story as such). Second, a list of “AUs for when your OTP are both assholes” included “Shouting match over the last Thanksgiving turkey at the grocery store AU.” A shouting match is fine, I guess, but fighting over a turkey seems to me to beg for slapstick...





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Typey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Typey/gifts).



> “Blame Typey,” I believe a common expression goes. More-appropriate words were never spoken, as it’s Typey’s fault that these two ideas were put together in the first place.

“Here, turkey, turkey, turkey,” Myka muttered. Some kind of supermarket theory probably dictated why you always had to hike all the way to the back of the store to get to the meat department. Some kind of _annoying_ supermarket theory that didn’t take into account the fact that it might be Thanksgiving and you might have, oh, eight people showing up at your place in not very many hours, and you would have been ready for that if you hadn’t been held up for almost _thirty_ hours in the Phoenix airport and just got home this morning. Anyone with any sense would’ve just rented a car and driven home to Colorado Springs (only a twelve hour drive!), or bought a new ticket and flown to Denver and then driven (an hour and a half!). But oh no, she’d been stubborn. In an airport on the day before Thanksgiving, she’d decided to be stubborn.

Fine, then: now she was going to keep on being stubborn, keep on and _make Thanksgiving dinner at my house like I said I would_. She added a “damn right I am” at the end of that, as mulish punctuation.

And there at last was the big freezer, shining like… like the extremely shiny thing it was. No time for flowery language; she was on a mission. She looked down into the case, and just for her, wedged all alone in the back corner, forlorn and most likely freezer-burned, was Myka’s turkey. “Thanks for waiting,” Myka told it. Finally, finally, _finally_ , she was going to be able to get this holiday back on track. She reached down for her prize, this turkey that had so steadfastly held its position, watching its friends bought by happy holiday shoppers over the past week, knowing perfectly well all the while that Myka was on her way. And so now, home to defrost, then cook, then serve (slightly late, but excusably so, given the airport situation) this sine qua non of the holiday meal. She would show everybody, particularly her mother and father, that she was _perfectly capable_ —

“I beg your pardon,” she heard, right next to her ear: a woman’s voice, low and extremely appealing, and was that a British accent? Myka could have sworn she could even feel breath on her neck. A voice, and warm breath, and she dropped the turkey, which landed with a crunch back into the veritable snowbank of ice crystals in the bottom of the freezer.

Before Myka could react consciously, she saw a pair of pale hands reach into the freezer. She saw her steadfast soldier of a bird being lifted by those hands, and she looked up as her turkey rose into the arms of… a hair model? She had to be; her face was beautiful, without doubt, but her hair was an otherworldly cascade of dark, dark gloss. And Myka did need a second, just a second, to get her eyes and her voice and her knowledge of a looming Thanksgiving dinner moving in tandem again. When she did, she yelped, “Hey! That’s my turkey!”

“Is it?” The hair model looked at down at it, nestled comfortably and seemingly contentedly in her arms. _Traitor_ , Myka thought, _you fowl traitor_. That low voice went on, now amused: “And yet it seems to be for sale.”

Myka snapped, “It is! And I’m buying it!” What she did next, she later would chalk up to exhaustion and frustration and, apparently, compulsion: she reached out and grabbed the turkey from the hair model.

Who gaped at her, then narrowed her eyes. “Give that back to me!” she said, more loudly than she needed to.

“No!” Myka barked, more loudly than _she_ needed to.

“Fine then, I’ll take it!” She proceeded to do just that, seizing it back again—or trying to, because Myka kept a grip on it. The ice crystals that clung to it were melting fast, and the plastic casing was slippery, but Myka kept her grip.

So did the hair model. They stared at each other over the turkey. “It’s the last one!” Myka blurted. She had no idea why she’d felt the need to state the obvious so emphatically…

Apparently it was to make the hair model even more condescending, so Myka wouldn’t feel bad about continuing to hate her for her turkey-stealing ways. “That’s why _I need it_ ,” she explained in a completely patronizing way.

Myka’s fingers slipped. She reestablished her position. “Let _go!_ ” she roared.

“No! _You_ let go!” yelled the hair model.

“Ladies,” Myka heard a deep male voice say from somewhere behind her right shoulder.

“Slight disagreement,” the hair model said, with quite astonishing composure, to whoever that was.

“My ass,” Myka muttered.

The hair model said, with an impertinent little eyebrow-raise at Myka, “We can talk about that later,” and if she thought she had any right to be _suggestive_ in the middle of all this? Myka wanted to punch that presumption right off of her face.

Myka tried one more time to pull the stupid turkey away from her, snarling, “We won’t talk about one single thing later! There is no later!” The hair model’s grip was really surprisingly strong. For a hair model. Who had tremendously deep brown eyes. And an annoying little smirk-leer that wouldn’t leave her mouth even though she could clearly see how much _that_ was making Myka want to punch her _even more_. And indeed Myka might in fact have punched her, if that wouldn’t have meant letting go of the turkey. Yes, given all those things, a really strong grip. And her hands were really… don’t think about her hands, Myka. Think about getting this turkey away from her, going home, and forgetting this ever happened.

They might have kept playing turkey tug-of-war for hours, they were both so dug in, but the owner of the deep male voice said, “Let’s all calm down—”

“Calm _down?!_ ” said Myka and the hair model, nearly as one, as they turned to look at him, also in near-choreographed unison. His nametag declared him “Meat Department Assistant Manager.”

“—and hand me the turkey,” he finished. And then he made his fatal mistake: he put his hands on the bird. He put his hands on the bird, and he tugged at it, and Myka and the hair model were now pulling back together, to keep it from him…

…but he was a very beefy guy, this meat department assistant manager—which was probably why he’d been sent to deal with this situation in the first place—and the combination of his yank with Myka’s and the hair model’s apparently mutual loss of grip led to a series of events that Myka probably wouldn’t have believed if anybody had tried to narrate them to her:

He had the turkey entirely in his hands, but then he began to fall backwards.

His feet slid forward as his arms kept moving back, but he seemed to have been unprepared for how slippery the condensation on the plastic had made the bird.

As if flung by a catapult, the turkey left his hands and soared through the air.

_As god is my witness_ , Myka told herself and the universe as she watched it go, go, go, _I thought turkeys_ couldn’t _fly_.

The carcass hit the highest shelf in the department in which it had been cleared for landing: wine. The highest shelf, where the most expensive bottles lived. The supermarket should really have its own Olympic team, Myka reflected, and this guy should throw the javelin or the shot-put or any other projectile, because that turkey bowling-balled its way through the entire shelf: bang, crash, clatter, each bottle sounding a particular ringing, shattering chime as it fell, shelf to floor, until the aisle ran red with a blend of cabernet, merlot, and pinot noir. Plus hints of Malbec and tempranillo.  

The crashes were starters’ pistols, each setting off a new stampede to the wine department: employees and customers alike charged toward the chaos, thus creating even greater pandemonium.

Myka and the hair model looked at each other. Then Myka had a thought, and she could tell the hair model had the exact same thought at the exact same moment, because they both turned to look at that high shelf in the wine department for the… “Turkey!” they both shouted, and took off to join the melee.

“Oh no you don’t!” the hair model yelled, but she was yelling it at Myka’s back, because Myka’s legs were longer and she was faster and that meant she reached the fracas first but had to push her way through, but she could see that pale plastic package teetering on that shelf, and if she could just get close enough to tip it down to herself, she’d—

The hair model darted around the endcap, in front of Myka, _from the next aisle over_ —which explained why Myka hadn’t felt her presence behind her as she struggled through the crowd—and grabbed the turkey down. With those hands.

_Let her have the turkey_ , said the rational side of Myka’s brain.

_NO!_ shouted the side that had spent thirty hours in an airport.

Myka launched herself at the hair model’s legs, and she toppled over, dropping the ever-more-slippery bird. Myka scrabbled past her and draped herself over it. She sat up and clutched it to her chest. It was _painfully_ cold… but it was hers. At last, it was hers. She couldn’t resist a triumphant “Ha!” to which the hair model responded, surprisingly mildly for someone who was prone and now clutching Myka’s leg to keep her down, “Go ahead, buy it. I’ll just steal it from you in the parking lot.”

“I’ll have you arrested!” Myka spluttered.

The hair model escalated again: “I’ll steal the receipt, too!”

“I did not sit in an airport for thirty hours on the day before Thanksgiving just to have my turkey stolen!”

“It is impossible to sit anywhere for thirty hours on one day! And it is _not your turkey!_ ”

“It is now! I tackled you, and you fumbled! And now if you’ll just _let go of my leg_ , I can get home and start cooking it and wash all this red wine off of me and _maybe_ be able to answer the door on time at least!” Myka strained to get her leg free. God, this woman’s grip was strong.

Myka heard her say, now again surprisingly mildly, “Wait.”

“Why?”

Still mild, but now with some concern: “You’re bleeding.”

That concern _had_ to be fake. “I am not! You’re trying to make me set this turkey down!”

“Seriously now. Your leg,” the hair model said, nodding her head in the direction of the leg she wasn’t gripping.

Myka looked down and saw what had happened: she’d inadvertently kicked a lower shelf and knocked over several more bottles: this time huge, cheap things, made of thick glass that yielded shards sharp enough to slice into her pant leg. If only she’d scrambled with slightly less enthusiasm, she might have noticed where her legs were… or possibly managed to restrict her kicking to the hardier boxed Chablis… the cut wasn’t bad; the jagged edges of the incision on her jeans weren’t turning red particularly quickly. Still… she looked at the turkey she’d sacrificed a pretty good pair of jeans for, then at the woman who _still_ had her hands wrapped around Myka’s undamaged leg.

“You’re bleeding too,” Myka said, for one of those lovely hands was covered in blood completely unrelated to Myka’s leg: a cut extended from her wrist up to the first knuckle of her index finger. “Let me see that,” Myka said. She didn’t know why she’d said it, but the hair model let go immediately and scrambled up to sit beside Myka. Myka set the turkey aside and took the hand in hers. Okay, the cut was long, but not deep, so… “It doesn’t look too bad,” Myka said, and then she glanced from the hand to those dark eyes, and it occurred to her that she was now holding the hand of a stomach-flippingly attractive woman, one who wasn’t making any move to take her hand away—

“Myka?” she heard from in front of her. “Is that you? And… H.G.?”

Myka looked up to regard a person she hadn’t expected to see until he arrived at her house for dinner. “Steve? What are you doing here?”

“I really don’t think that’s the pertinent question,” Steve said. “And I think I was led to believe that you two didn’t know each other.”

Myka looked at the hair model. The hair model shook her head in apparent confusion. They both looked back up at Steve. “We don’t,” they said in unison.

“Okay…” Steve said. “If that’s the story you want to stick to, then let me introduce you. Just to be polite. Myka, this is H.G., I mean, Helena. Helena Wells, my new boss… been here a couple months… and H.G., this is Myka, my best friend from college… you might both remember, I mentioned each of you to the other? Because I thought you might, um, get along?”

Myka stared at him. “ _This_ is the person you’ve been saying is just my type?” She looked at Helena. Hair, eyes, hands… accent. Yes, actually, if she were being honest, this hair model—but not a hair model, not if she was Steve’s boss—okay, this defense contractor with strong hands and astonishing hair was most likely entirely her type. And judging by how warm Myka was starting to feel, just from holding one of those strong hands, her body agreed completely. She found herself wondering what it might be like to move her other hand up to touch that hair… and then to do more than that… slide her fingers in… pull her close… find out if her lips were as soft and welcoming as they seemed they might be…

Helena now said to Steve, “ _This_ is the person with whom I have so much in common?” Then again, Myka thought as she watched those lips form a frown, they didn’t really look soft at all, and certainly not welcoming, not now, and certainly not when they were curved into an insufferable smirk, as they had been before. Never mind, then: if she didn’t— “Well,” Helena said, with something like a resigned head-shake, “we were certainly in pursuit of a common goal just now. So…” And then she smiled at Myka, and Myka was instantly _sure_ she needed to find out about those lips.

Myka told her, “He really has been working overtime to set us up. I don’t know if he’s been selling this as hard to you as he has to me, but—”

Steve sighed. “I wanted to set you up on a _date_ , though. A _normal_ date, not a supermarket riot that ends up with you cuddling on the battlefield…”

“And bloody,” Myka said. She extended her leg and raised Helena’s hand. Which she was still holding, so she couldn’t really dispute the “cuddling” part. “Don’t forget the blood.”

“That or the turkey,” Helena said. She still didn’t seem inclined to take her hand away.

Steve looked confused. “What turkey?”

How could he have missed the turkey? “This turkey!” Myka said. She made to set her non-cuddling hand on what was most likely a now less solidly frozen tur… but nothing was there. “Somebody stole our turkey!”

“ _Our_ turkey?” If Helena had said those words fifteen minutes ago, they would have been indignant. Now they seemed only inquisitive.

“We both fought really hard for that turkey,” Myka said solemnly.

Helena sighed. “And yet now someone else has it. So much for fighting the good… well, not the good fight, but the quite dedicated fight.”

“I don’t know why I was so dedicated. I hate Thanksgiving,” Myka said, “and I don’t even like turkey.”

“I have been wondering, a bit, why so many Americans seem so attached to its traditional dishes. Your turkey and stuffing and I believe I was told there is some appalling combination of sweet potatoes and marshmallows?”

“Wait a minute,” Myka said. She looked up at Steve. “Why are you standing there holding three cans of sweet potatoes? Isn’t that casserole you bring to my parents’ house every year homemade?”

“It usually is, but I didn’t have time to cook. We,” and he gestured between himself and Helena, “seriously just finished submitting a proposal an hour ago. We’ve been working nonstop since yesterday. Total all-nighter.”

“Oh. That’s why you didn’t have a turkey yet,” Myka said, and Helena nodded. She did look tired, Myka realized. She hadn’t been paying attention to anything like that, before, but now she saw the slight darkness of fatigue marring the pale skin under those just-her-type eyes. She said, “Sounds like we might both have been a little… stressed out.”

“I wasn’t in an airport for thirty hours, however.” Helena inclined her head slightly. A concession.

A tiny dip of the head—and Myka’s heart dipped with it, dipped and then soared. “How many people do you have?” she asked Helena.

“For Thanksgiving? Four, including myself.”

Myka normally did not make spontaneous decisions. But she also normally did not sit in a pool of red wine in the supermarket. While bleeding. After coming appallingly close to starting a fistfight over a turkey with someone who was not a hair model but could have been one if she wanted to. “I have an idea. If you and your people wouldn’t mind hanging out with me and Steve and a bunch more crazies, come to my house. We’ll order pizza. And eat Steve’s canned sweet potatoes and whatever else we can cobble together. Toast and popcorn, like Charlie Brown.”

“Are you sure?” Helena asked in a way that Myka didn’t know how to decipher—was it restrained eagerness? Or was she hoping that Myka would say no and in turn spare her the need to say it?

Myka looked a question at Steve, who nodded. Relieved, she said, “I bet that turkey wouldn’t have defrosted in time for anybody’s dinner anyway, much less cooked all the way through. Wherever it ends up, they’ll all get salmonella poisoning. So a riot and minor cuts and abrasions, culminating in pizza for everybody? Infinitely preferable.” Then she had a panicked thought: “Unless one of your people is… uh. Unless it’s a…” But surely Steve wouldn’t have been trying to set them up if Helena were seeing someone? Surely not, right?

Helena was looking closely at Myka—she could hardly do anything else, given how near they were—and the scrutiny made Myka’s blood begin to snake, twisting with each heartbeat. Residual adrenaline from their fight? New adrenaline from whatever this was turning into? “It is not. I have an idea, too,” Helena said, and she placed a light, swift kiss on Myka’s cheek. Myka’s meandering blood decided to raise its game and do somersaults instead, because clearly Helena’s idea was much, much better than her own decidedly prosaic, because unrelated to kissing, thoughts about ordering pizza… Helena smiled again and said, “Thank you for the invitation. My guests are all coworkers of mine and Steve’s, and I believe they know you, and I further believe they have been conspiring with Steve on this ‘set the two of us up’ plan. So if you don’t mind an audience avidly watching us eat pizza together…” She shrugged, sweetness and suggestion in one endearing gesture.

Definitely new adrenaline.

As Myka blinked at Helena through a haze of _oh this is going to be some kind of amazing_ and _I’m pretty sure Thanksgiving just became my favorite holiday_ , she thought she heard Steve say, “I like being right.”

END

**Author's Note:**

> original tumblr tags: they aren't really assholes of course, they were just a little stressed, I was going to call this WKRP, but just because a certain line is a backwards reference to my wife's favorite episode of a sitcom ever, that doesn't mean that everybody will get the joke, in other news, anyone who makes a flying tackle like the one Myka does here, will always in my head be echoing Rosalind Russell's in His Girl Friday, have I ever mentioned that I've never not wanted a B&W version of His Girl Friday?, probably so, I waffle though on which one is Walter and which one is Hildy, because you could do it either way, Myka-as-Walter saying no Helena you shouldn't marry Ralph Bellamy, that isn't who you really are, but then again Helena-as-Walter is nearly impossible to resist, slyly reminding Myka of how good they were together, this is another B&W movie I would give a kidney or several to see


End file.
